Sometimes life moves along quite smoothly, everything going as planned and everyone around us behaving as expected. But sometimes it doesn’t or they don’t. We face physical troubles or academic struggles or relationship trials or unexpected bills. We feel alone in our discouragement, but God is paying attention. The faith we need for these times is not faith that all will be easy or faith that if we wish hard enough, our problems will disappear. Instead, the biblical faith we must learn is faith that pores over God’s Word, seeking his face and his will and trusting that this great God knows best.
Consider Job. He lost his children, his wealth, his health, and his comfort. Then his so-called friends incorrectly told him that he lost it all because he wasn’t right with God, so he didn’t even have the consolation of friends. Job’s situation was miserable. He didn’t understand why these trials came into his life. He relates a moment in Job 19:25-27, however, when his perspective was what ours ought to be in trials: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another. My heart faints within me!” Although he lived many years before Christ died on Calvary and could not look back at the historical account of a Savior dying for him, his thoughts were on a future communicated to him by his God, the same sure hope we all have as Christians. One day our God shall stand on this earth. All wrongs will be made right, and we will see our Redeemer. Job’s hopeful words in this passage are not owing to a premonition that all would be restored to him on this earth; the hope that overwhelmed him was the prospect of one day seeing his Redeemer.
God knows all that you’re facing, and he is with you as he was with Job. Someday you will see him. You will be on his side, the winning side, and all wrongs will be made right. Focus on your Redeemer today. Learn to know and love him better so that the thought of seeing him overwhelms you. Then the daily troubles and struggles will be easier to bear–because you will remember that your Redeemer, your risen Savior, knows best.